Faces of Rulership in the Maya Region (Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposia and Colloquia) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0884025209 ISBN 13: 9780884025207

Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection, 2025

Synopsis

Authority—whether royal, divine, material, fleeting, or enduring—varied across space and time in the Maya region, from its Preclassic dynastic origins through the colonial encounters of the sixteenth century. The changing faces of Maya rulership and their foundational ties to symbolic material objects, architecture, ancestral beings, deities, and written monuments are fully explored in the fifteen chapters of Faces of Rulership in the Maya Region. The contributors track rulership—beyond the prevalent paradigm of divine kingship—by considering the power of queens and unravelling codes embedded in art and public buildings. Through the close study of the agency of rulers who often sought to distinguish themselves from other dynasts, the contributors come to an enhanced understanding of the relational dynamics between rulers and subject peoples. The book reveals that rulership was perpetually challenged in ways that impacted adjacent institutions of nobles and literati. Applying concepts of rulership outlined in On Kings by David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins, this volume brings Maya history and archaeology into the current, anthropological conversation about rulership in premodern times.

About this title

About the Authors

Patricia A. McAnany is Kenan Eminent Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Marilyn A. Masson is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0884025209
• ISBN 13: 9780884025207
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: McAnany Patricia A., Masson Marilyn A.